Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Active particles driven by competing spatially dependent self-propulsion and external force

  Lorenzo Caprini, Umberto Marini Bettolo Marconi, René Wittmann , Hartmut Löwen

  SciPost Phys. 13, 065 (2022) · published 23 September 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate how the competing presence of a nonuniform motility landscape and an external confining field affects the properties of active particles. We employ the active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particle (AOUP) model with a periodic swim-velocity profile to derive analytical approximations for the steady-state probability distribution of position and velocity, encompassing both the Unified Colored Noise Approximation and the theory of potential-free active particles with spatially dependent swim velocity recently developed. We test the theory by confining an active particle in a harmonic trap, which gives rise to interesting properties, such as a transition from a unimodal to a bimodal (and, eventually multimodal) spatial density, induced by decreasing the spatial period of the self propulsion. Correspondingly, the velocity distribution shows pronounced deviations from the Gaussian shape, even displaying a bimodal profile in the high-motility regions. We thus show that the interplay of two relatively simple physical fields can be employed to generate complex emerging behavior.

  13 citations

• Anisotropic Landau-Lifshitz model in discrete space-time

  Žiga Krajnik, Enej Ilievski, Tomaž Prosen, Vincent Pasquier

  SciPost Phys. 11, 051 (2021) · published 9 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We construct an integrable lattice model of classical interacting spins in discrete space-time, representing a discrete-time analogue of the lattice Landau-Lifshitz ferromagnet with uniaxial anisotropy. As an application we use this explicit discrete symplectic integration scheme to compute the spin Drude weight and diffusion constant as functions of anisotropy and chemical potential. We demonstrate qualitatively different behavior in the easy-axis and the easy-plane regimes in the non-magnetized sector. Upon approaching the isotropic point we also find an algebraic divergence of the diffusion constant, signaling a crossover to spin superdiffusion.

  12 citations

• Analyticity of critical exponents of the $O(N)$ models from nonperturbative renormalization

  Andrzej Chlebicki, Pawel Jakubczyk

  SciPost Phys. 10, 134 (2021) · published 7 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We employ the functional renormalization group framework at the second order in the derivative expansion to study the $O(N)$ models continuously varying the number of field components $N$ and the spatial dimensionality $d$. We in particular address the Cardy-Hamber prediction concerning nonanalytical behavior of the critical exponents $\nu$ and $\eta$ across a line in the $(d,N)$ plane, which passes through the point $(2,2)$. By direct numerical evaluation of $\eta(d,N)$ and $\nu^{-1}(d,N)$ as well as analysis of the functional fixed-point profiles, we find clear indications of this line in the form of a crossover between two regimes in the $(d,N)$ plane, however no evidence of discontinuous or singular first and second derivatives of these functions for $d>2$. The computed derivatives of $\eta(d,N)$ and $\nu^{-1}(d,N)$ become increasingly large for $d\to 2$ and $N\to 2$ and it is only in this limit that $\eta(d,N)$ and $\nu^{-1}(d,N)$ as obtained by us are evidently nonanalytical. By scanning the dependence of the subleading eigenvalue of the RG transformation on $N$ for $d>2$ we find no indication of its vanishing as anticipated by the Cardy-Hamber scenario. For dimensionality $d$ approaching 3 there are no signatures of the Cardy-Hamber line even as a crossover and its existence in the form of a nonanalyticity of the anticipated form is excluded.

  12 citations

• Delocalization transition in low energy excitation modes of vector spin glasses

  Silvio Franz, Flavio Nicoletti, Giorgio Parisi, Federico Ricci-Tersenghi

  SciPost Phys. 12, 016 (2022) · published 12 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the energy minima of the fully-connected $m$-components vector spin glass model at zero temperature in an external magnetic field for $m\ge 3$. The model has a zero temperature transition from a paramagnetic phase at high field to a spin glass phase at low field. We study the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the Hessian in the minima of the Hamiltonian. The spectrum is gapless both in the paramagnetic and in the spin glass phase, with a pseudo-gap behaving as $\lambda^{m-1}$ in the paramagnetic phase and as $\sqrt{\lambda}$ at criticality and in the spin glass phase. Despite the long-range nature of the model, the eigenstates close to the edge of the spectrum display quasi-localization properties. We show that the paramagnetic to spin glass transition corresponds to delocalization of the edge eigenvectors. We solve the model by the cavity method in the thermodynamic limit. We also perform numerical minimization of the Hamiltonian for $N\le 2048$ and compute the spectral properties, that show very strong corrections to the asymptotic scaling approaching the critical point.

  12 citations

• Coexistence of coarsening and mean field relaxation in the long-range Ising chain

  Federico Corberi, Alessandro Iannone, Manoj Kumar, Eugenio Lippiello, Paolo Politi

  SciPost Phys. 10, 109 (2021) · published 18 May 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the kinetics after a low temperature quench of the one-dimensional Ising model with long range interactions between spins at distance $r$ decaying as $r^{-\alpha}$. For $\alpha =0$, i.e. mean field, all spins evolve coherently quickly driving the system towards a magnetised state. In the weak long range regime with $\alpha >1$ there is a coarsening behaviour with competing domains of opposite sign without development of magnetisation. For strong long range, i.e. $0<\alpha <1$, we show that the system shows both features, with probability $P_\alpha (N)$ of having the latter one, with the different limiting behaviours $\lim _{N\to \infty}P_\alpha (N)=0$ (at fixed $\alpha<1$) and $\lim _{\alpha \to 1}P_\alpha (N)=1$ (at fixed finite $N$). {\color{red}We discuss how this behaviour is a manifestation of an underlying dynamical scaling symmetry due to the presence of a single characteristic time $\tau _\alpha (N)\sim N^\alpha$.

  12 citations

• Extreme value statistics of edge currents in Markov jump processes and their use for entropy production estimation

  Izaak Neri, Matteo Polettini

  SciPost Phys. 14, 131 (2023) · published 25 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The infimum of an integrated current is its extreme value against the direction of its average flow. Using martingale theory, we show that the infima of integrated edge currents in time-homogeneous Markov jump processes are geometrically distributed, with a mean value determined by the effective affinity measured by a marginal observer that only sees the integrated edge current. In addition, we show that a marginal observer can estimate a fraction of the average entropy production rate in the underlying nonequilibrium process from the extreme value statistics in the integrated edge current. The estimated average rate of dissipation obtained in this way equals the above mentioned effective affinity times the average edge current. Moreover, we show that estimates of dissipation based on extreme value statistics can be significantly more accurate than those based on thermodynamic uncertainty ratios, as well as those based on a naive estimator obtained by neglecting nonMarkovian correlations in the Kullback-Leibler divergence of the trajectories of the integrated edge current.

  12 citations

• "Spectrally gapped" random walks on networks: a Mean First Passage Time formula

  Silvia Bartolucci, Fabio Caccioli, Francesco Caravelli, Pierpaolo Vivo

  SciPost Phys. 11, 088 (2021) · published 4 November 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We derive an approximate but explicit formula for the Mean First Passage Time of a random walker between a source and a target node of a directed and weighted network. The formula does not require any matrix inversion, and it takes as only input the transition probabilities into the target node. It is derived from the calculation of the average resolvent of a deformed ensemble of random sub-stochastic matrices $H=\langle H\rangle +\delta H$, with $\langle H\rangle$ rank-$1$ and non-negative. The accuracy of the formula depends on the spectral gap of the reduced transition matrix, and it is tested numerically on several instances of (weighted) networks away from the high sparsity regime, with an excellent agreement.

  12 citations

• Classicality with(out) decoherence: Concepts, relation to Markovianity, and a random matrix theory approach

  Philipp Strasberg

  SciPost Phys. 15, 024 (2023) · published 24 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Answers to the question how a classical world emerges from underlying quantum physics are revisited, connected and extended as follows. First, three distinct concepts are compared: decoherence in open quantum systems, consistent/decoherent histories and Kolmogorov consistency. Second, the crucial role of quantum Markovianity (defined rigorously) to connect these concepts is established. Third, using a random matrix theory model, quantum effects are shown to be exponentially suppressed in the measurement statistics of slow and coarse observables despite the presence of large amount of coherences. This is also numerically exemplified, and it highlights the potential and importance of non-integrability and chaos for the emergence of classicality.

  12 citations

• Role of fluctuations in the phase transitions of coupled plaquette spin models of glasses

  Giulio Biroli, Charlotte Rulquin, Gilles Tarjus, Marco Tarzia

  SciPost Phys. 1, 007 (2016) · published 25 October 2016 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the role of fluctuations on the thermodynamic glassy properties of plaquette spin models, more specifically on the transition involving an overlap order parameter in the presence of an attractive coupling between different replicas of the system. We consider both short-range fluctuations associated with the local environment on Bethe lattices and long-range fluctuations that distinguish Euclidean from Bethe lattices with the same local environment. We find that the phase diagram in the temperature-coupling plane is very sensitive to the former but, at least for the $3$-dimensional (square pyramid) model, appears qualitatively or semi-quantitatively unchanged by the latter. This surprising result suggests that the mean-field theory of glasses provides a reasonable account of the glassy thermodynamics of models otherwise described in terms of the kinetically constrained motion of localized defects and taken as a paradigm for the theory of dynamic facilitation. We discuss the possible implications for the dynamical behavior.

  12 citations

• Studying the 3d Ising surface CFTs on the fuzzy sphere

  Zheng Zhou, Yijian Zou

  SciPost Phys. 18, 031 (2025) · published 24 January 2025 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Boundaries not only are fundamental elements in nearly all realistic physical systems, but also greatly enrich the structure of quantum field theories. In this paper, we demonstrate that conformal field theory (CFT) with a boundary, known as surface CFT in three dimensions, can be studied with the setup of fuzzy sphere. We consider the example of surface criticality of the 3D Ising CFT. We propose two schemes by cutting a boundary in the orbital space or the real space to realise the ordinary and the normal surface CFTs on the fuzzy sphere. We obtain the operator spectra through state-operator correspondence. We observe integer spacing of the conformal multiplets, and thus provide direct evidence of conformal symmetry. We identify the ordinary surface primary $o$, the displacement operator $\mathrm{D}$ and their conformal descendants and extract their scaling dimensions. We also study the one-point and two-point correlation functions and extract the bulk-to-surface OPE coefficients, some of which are reported for the first time. In addition, using the overlap of the bulk CFT state and the polarised state, we calculate the boundary central charges of the 3D Ising surface CFTs non-perturbatively. Other conformal data obtained in this way also agrees with prior methods.

  12 citations